From 2015, NSW government policy was to establish the Great Koala National Park to help protect koalas from logging on public land.

In late 2025, the NSW government changed long-held, unconditional promise to be conditional on the Park being a carbon offset project.

The credits generated from the project will enable the coal and gas industry and other big industrial polluters to cause more climate pollution than would otherwise be the case as the more credits that are created, the more pollution is allowed to occur under the Safeguard Mechanism.

While Commonwealth government policy is based on the idea that the harm from fossil fuel emissions can be ‘offset’ via the purchase of carbon credits, climate science does not support this approach.

The harm to the climate system caused by fossil fuels cannot be undone by the Koala Park because it does not permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere and would likely have been established anyway.

The legislative instrument that would allow the Park to generate carbon credits, which is currently before the Federal Parliament, should be disallowed.